Welcome to “The Innovators”, a new HD segment on Technology Evangelist. The Innovators brings you the up-and-comers, the names and faces of people who will be changing the world in the next few years. You may not have heard of our guests quite yet, but soon these names will be well known around the tech industry.

Our first Innovator is Derek Franklin. Derek talks to Technology Evangelist about his passions: Flash and Search. How can one man take on the behemoth Google? Simple, he thinks outside the Google Search box.

If you have QuickTime 7 installed, you will see a graphic above that says ‘Watch Now’. Simply click on the graphic and your video will start to play in standard definition. If you prefer download the HD files, you may do so in iTunes or by subscribing to our RSS feeds. All files are available as torrents, 480p, 720p, 1080p, iPod, Sony PSP, 3GPP, MP3 and AAC. To view the extended selection of formats, please click here.

A full transcript of the video is available after the jump. Enjoy the first episode of "The Innovators".
(more…)

Share This

Google’s latest Toolbar (Verson 4) has a new feature that is sure to be popular with people who are interested in making the most of their toolbar real estate: custom buttons. (Check your toolbar version under Settings > Help > About Google Toolbar. This function currently works only on Internet Explorer versions of the toolbar.)

Create custom buttons that link directly to your favorite sites! Okay, that alone isn’t particularly exciting since you could do that using a bookmarks toolbar, so here’s where it gets more interesting. You can add functionality to the buttons, such as RSS feed syndication*, create custom searches, and pass data from the page you’re visiting to the search site of your choice.

Custom Searches: If you find yourself running searches on search engines other than Google on a regular basis, why not add that search site to your toolbar for fast access to that site? This allows you to type your query into the Google Toolbar search box, then head directly to the results page on the site of your choice. Here is a screen shot of my search options as of this writing:

This can be used two ways: type a search into the text field, then click the icon to select the appropriate icon for the search, or change your default search engine by clicking the icon to the left of the search box. The icon next to the search box identifies which search site you’ll query when you hit the enter key or Go button.

Feed Subscription Buttons: Google Toolbar provides a new way to subscribe to a blog. By adding a blog’s custom button to your Google Toolbar, you can easily scan the latest headlines from the blog of your choice from the toolbar. Here is an example for Technology Evangelist:

Clicking the down arrow next to the Technology Evangelist icon displays a drop-down menu of the latest headlines from this site. Clicking a headline takes you directly to that post. Clicking the icon takes you to this site’s homepage. By the way, the icon to the right of Technology Evangelist is the above screen shot comes from Niall Kenney’s blog.

Searching Within Sites

Taking another look at the first screen shot, notice that Technology Evangelist and Niall Kennedy’s blog both appear among the searches in the drop-down:

Buttons can be set up to query against a site’s search engine. If you suddenly find yourself in need of something you previously read on Technology Evangelist, just search our site’s content from your toolbar. More likely uses of custom searches are queries of comparison shopping sites like Pricegrabber, large reference sites like Wikipedia, and specialty search engines like Technorati.

Give our button a try

As of this writing, if you’re using Internet Explorer and have version 4 or higher of the Google Toolbar installed, adding the Technology Evangelist custom button is as simple as clicking on this link. You can always delete our button at a later date under Settings > Options > Buttons on the Google Toolbar. Let us know what you think.

If you’ve used custom buttons, have you found them useful? If yes, what have you liked about them? If not, why not?

What kind of custom button would you like to have that doesn’t exist today?

*Yes, you can do this in Firefox using Live Bookmarks.

Share This

While reviewing some of Technology Evangelist’s web site stats today, I was reminded that success is not something that happens over night in most cases. While this may come across as a fairly obvious statement, seeing graphs that support is really make sense of it. For example, here’s a graph of Technology Evangelist’s RSS circulation stats from Feedburner since this blog was launched a little over 3 months ago:

Feedburner measures the number of subscribers to a site through services like Bloglines, Feedblitz, NewsGator, and other RSS options.

We did some advertising January that accounts for the jump at that time, but other than that the growth has been primarily from people discovering the blog through search engines, other blogs, or word of mouth. The first six weeks of blogging was a fairly lonely time.

Why did our blog’s circulation grow?

1. We did some advertising in January in conjunction with our work at the CES show.

2. Search engines started picking up our content, leading to more unique daily visitors.

3. Other blogs started linking to articles they found interesting on our site.

4. We moved our subscription options to a more prominent location on our site’s template.

5. We offered explanations on what RSS subscriptions actually are for new blog readers.

6. We consistently posted fresh content to the site.

After six weeks, or over 40 daily posts, we we still tracking less than 25 subscribers to our RSS feeds. It’s a good thing we stuck with it longer than that so search engines would have a chance to index the content we were creating.

Lessons Learned

1. Blogging success doesn’t happen over night.

2. Search engines don’t index content over night.

3. Providing easy to find and understand instructions on RSS syndication increases subscribe rates.

4. Consistent posting pays off.

Further Reading

Steve Pavlina published a great summary of his blog’s traffic and revenue growth for 2005 that really shows how exponential a blog’s growth can be if it provides regular posts with great content.

Darren Rowse published analysis last year of his growing AdSense revenue with comments on what exponential monthly growth can mean for bloggers who stick through the lean first few months.

Share This

I was in a meeting earlier today where we needed a laser pointer. 
Went to my desk to grab my uber-cool green pointer, but could not find
it.  I was in a hurry, so I grabbed my lame and not very bright red one
and went on my way.  During the meeting my mind started wandering to
different types of laser pointers, and what one could actually get. 
While red is nice, how cool would it be to have a collection of different
colored laser pointers?  So I have decided to start
collecting.  Hey, I’m
a technoholic, it’s what I
do.

I already have a red laser pointer.  I think everyone knows what
these look like, it’s soooo 1995.

I had a green laser pointer from
Think
Geek.  I just need to find my green pen again,
or buy
a new one.  Cost here is $79.00.

I have always wanted a BLUE laser pointer.  I have seen blue
lasers before, but nothing small enough to fit in my hand.  Did a
bit of web   searching, and for a mere $999 I can get my hands on an
actual
blue laser pen.  For $1,899 I can get a pen that’s insane, crazy
bright.

One color I had not thought of was
yellow,
and that’s a lot less than blue at $299.  Problem is that I can’t get
this pen shipped to the US (afraid I may, what, blind myself?)  I’ll
see if I can’t get around that somehow and add that to my collection.

This will be a fun new project, collecting as many different colored laser
pens as possible.  Anyone know of colors other than red,
blue, green and yellow that will act like a pen/pointer?  With all
the current pointers, I’m looking at $1,377.  Has anyone worked with
these different colors before, or know anything about blue and yellow?

Share This

If I have an opinion about a product or service and decide to publish it online, where should I do so? If I have a great (or horrible) experience at a local restaurant, or feel particularly passionate about a product I’ve used, where should I share my opinions? Should I publish them in Amazon.com’s product reviews, citysearch.com, an online forum, or this blog? Each site has a slightly different audience, but they all have audiences for reviews of products and services I’ve enjoyed or disliked.

What to consider when publishing a review?

1. Audience: Who will see what you’ve written? Does the site provide an audience who’ll find your opinion valuable?

2. Reach: Does the site get any traffic?

It’s nice to be read.

Due to the large number of online venues available today for publishing reviews, a person really needs to be selective about where they contribute their knowledge. What’s the point in contributing a review to a site with no traffic, or a site that isn’t absolutely relevant to a topic? Also, why contribute free content to commercial sites where you’ll receive little to no compensation for your knowledge?

Luckily, technology appears to be coming to the rescue. Sites are working on hybrid solutions that will allow bloggers to syndicate reviews they write on their own site to other web sites. This allows bloggers to write reviews of products, restaurants and other services on their own sites then push that content onto other websites to gain more exposure For example, a blogger who likes writing restaurant reviews may primarily like writing them for his own site rather than CitySearch or Judysbook.com. JudysBook.com is now going to enable bloggers to push their reviews to Judysbook.com from their personal blogs.

Bloggers gain greater exposure for their content while maintaining their primary site. Judysbook.com gains valuable content from great writers who may not have been willing to contribute reviews directly to Judysbook.com, but will do so through the new blogging interface.

The authors of Technology Evangelist review products on this web site, but people shopping Amazon.com don’t have access to our content unless they’re subscribers to this site or happen to use a search engine to find reviews of the product they’re considering purchasing. If Amazon made it easy for us to publish a link to our review from the appropriate product page of their site, consumers would become better informed and we’d gain some additional traffic to our content.

No company will ever corner the market on opinions, but companies who manage to aggregate and sort the most opinions of products and services will likely provide an extremely valuable service to their visitors.

How do you think this will be done?

Where are you most likely to contribute commentary about a product or service you’ve used?

What kind of commentary do you find most useful when considering purchasing a product or service?

Share This

Being a
technoholic,
I had to have the Xbox 360 when it came out.  After
weeks and weeks and weeks of hunting around trying to find an Xbox 360, I
finally found one.  Hooray!  I wanted an Xbox 360 Premium, but all I
could find was a core system.  The big difference between the two is that
the premium includes a 20GB hard drive, a wireless controller, and the analog
component HD cables.

I got my core system home, and since I have a HDTV I also purchased the $30.00
HD connection cables.  Total cost so far, $330.  Found that the wire
on the controller was not long enough to make it to my couch, so I had to
purchase a wireless controller for $50.00.  Total cost now, $380. 
Now I need some games.  Can?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Ät just get the console and set her up, need
to be able to DO something with it.  For variety I got 4 games, a car
racing game, a first person shooter, a role playing game and a first
person/role playing combo game.  Each game runs about $50 for a total of
$200 bringing my total to $580.

Now I?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Äm gaming in HD, but wait?¬¢√᬴¬Æ¬®‚àÇ  I can?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Ät save any games!  There?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Äs no
built in memory to a core system.  This means that I could play a game,
unlock a bunch of fun stuff, but as soon as I exit I loose all my work. 
Not pleasant.  Had to go buy a memory card for $40.  Grand total so
far, $620.

What?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Äs that?  Xbox live?  I can download HD video, new games, and
play with other REAL players rather than the built in AI?  All I need to
do is connect the Xbox to the Internet.  Alas, no Ethernet connection in
my living room, it?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Äs all WiFi around here.  While the Xbox has a built in
Ethernet card, it has no built in WiFi.  I?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Äm in luck, I can buy a WiFi
adapter for my Xbox 360 for a mere $100.  New grand total, $720.

A friend came over to play the Xbox (add additional wireless controller for
$50 so friend and I can play Co-Op) and he brought some legacy Xbox
games.  Time to play Halo and Halo 2 and watch the Major General kick
some alien butt!  Put that disc in and?¬¢√᬴¬Æ¬®‚àÇ WAIT, STOP THE PRESSES! 
Since the old Xbox had a built in hard drive, the games start looking for one,
and as such all legacy Xbox games require a hard drive.  Want to download
any 720p trailers?  Those will all require a hard drive.  Tack $100
on to the price, bringing the new grand total to $870.

Of course there?¢Ç«®Ç—¢s the ongoing cost of Xbox live, Microsoft points (for new
themes and whatnot), additional games and custom faceplates for the Xbox 360
if one feels like customizing the front of the unit.  So BEFORE tax my
$300 Xbox 360 ended up costing me $870 American dollars.  A word of
advise:  if you?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Äre looking to buy a new Xbox 360 or if you?¬¢√᬴¬Æ√á‚Äre a
technoholic, make sure you?¢Ç«®Ç—¢re able to drop $1,000 without batting an
eye.  Otherwise, I would think twice before buying a unit like
this.  For the record, the cost of the system had I purchased (and been
able to get) a Xbox Premium would have been $790, or a difference of
$80.  Did anyone else make the jump to the Xbox 360?  What were your
costs, and did you think it was worth it?

Share This

I had a chance tonight to take a step back to look at how I was using RSS (through Bloglines) to aggregate news sources and came to an interesting conclusion: I prefer secondary news sources. What does that mean?

Over the past few months my RSS subscriptions have grown to close to 125 feeds. This is not a record for hardcore RSS junkies, but it was enough to deliver at least 1000 fresh headlines a day to me from newspapers and blogs. This became a problem when I found myself putting off reading valuable sites where I knew the writers tended to write longer (yet worthwhile) articles. Scanning a large volume of headlines is not nearly as valuable to me as absorbing the content contained within interesting news stories and blog posts.

I decided it was time for me to purge sites that did not delivering useful content. And where did I start: The Official Google Blog. People who know me will likely think, “Ed, aren’t you a search engine marketing geek? How can you ignore what Google reports on its blog?” Well, it turns out that I can ignore Google directly, yet still keep up on their every move due to the coverage of Google provided by other sites I subscribe to. For example, John Battelle, author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, offers more coverage of Google than Google does. And Battelle represents one of at least a dozen sites I subscribe to that track Google’s every move. The beauty of secondary news sources is I tend to get the news bundled with commentary from people I trust. I let other bloggers edit my Google news for me.

The same thing works with political blogs. No matter where you stand politically, there are blogs that share you world view. If you can find bloggers with similar values who have more time to keep up on the news of the day and package that news into bite sized editorialized chunks, you can stay informed in less time.

Is this really better than subscribing to traditional media sources? That’s for you to decide. Personally, I don’t care where my news comes from as long as I understand the bias of the people creating it.

Share This

Technology Evangelist is kicking off a new monthly feature today. We are publishing a list of the best products on the market today for mobile professionals. The list consists of products that are actually available on the market today. Not things we dream about, but things that can make you more efficient if you added them to your technology portfolio today.

We define Mobile Professionals as business people who spend more time out of the office than in. People who need to be able to bring their office with them wherever they go. They includes real estate agents, traveling sales people, and many breeds of consultants.

The list is broken down into two categories: Best Available and the Economic Choice.